After trading away several high-profile players at the trade deadline, the Yankees await the reaction of fans "unaccustomed to meaningless late-season games," and one of the "most telling gauges will be the demand for tickets on the resale market," according to Neil Best of NEWSDAY. Paid attendance "was down an average of 2,305 per game compared with last year" entering last night’s game against the Mets, "to a still-healthy 38,588." That figure "is not likely to fall much further because so many advance tickets already have been bought." But the question is how many "no-shows there will be down the stretch, and the related matter of how much fans will pay on the secondary market to ticket holders looking to unload inventory." SeatGeek content analyst Chris Leyden said that prices actually paid for Yankees tickets have "not yet dropped significantly but added he expects that 'as the season goes on, the demand for tickets will continue to decrease as the team falls further out of the playoff race.'" StubHub Global Head of Communications Glenn Lehrman said that it is "too early to tell what effect the trade-deadline maneuvers will have on demand late this summer." Gametime, an on-demand mobile ticket app, already has seen tickets "go for well under" 50% below face value, with "more likely to come." TV ratings are also "likely to sink further." The Yankees' struggles this season "have been good news for Comcast, whose 900,000 customers (mostly in New Jersey) have been without YES all year because of a carriage dispute," and it appears the matter "will not be resolved before the end of the season" (NEWSDAY, 8/4).
TALE OF TWO CITIES: In Baltimore, Peter Schmuck writes under the header, "Yankees' Rare Rebuild Puts Them In Stark Contrast With Win-Now Orioles." This is the season of "greatest contrast between the two franchises since the Yankees last did any serious rebuilding" in the early '90s. Orioles and former Yankees manager Buck Showalter said of the Yankees' deadline moves, "It reminded me of what they did with us in 1991 and '92. That's the last time they went in that direction. I think everybody in baseball is really impressed with what they did." The Yankees "hope to be back in contention sooner than" '19, when they will have shed several large contracts in time for a much-hyped potential free-agent class, but they might have trouble finding top-flight players in the free-agent market "for a while, no matter how much they have to spend" (Baltimore SUN, 8/4).
